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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1488

May 30, 2020

Anesthesia’s effect on consciousness solved, settling century-old scientific debate

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Summary: Exposure to anesthesia causes lipid clusters to move from an ordered state to a disordered one, then back again. These changes lead to subsequent effects that cause changes in consciousness.

Source: Scripps Research Institute

Surgery would be inconceivable without general anesthesia, so it may come as a surprise that despite its 175-year history of medical use, doctors and scientists have been unable to explain how anesthetics temporarily render patients unconscious.

May 30, 2020

Bill Faloon — If Nothing Else Kills Us, Aging Will (Longevity #005)

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, food, life extension, neuroscience, quantum physics

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May 30, 2020

Artificial intelligence is energy-hungry—new hardware could curb its appetite

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, nuclear energy, robotics/AI

To just solve a puzzle or play a game, artificial intelligence can require software running on thousands of computers. That could be the energy that three nuclear plants produce in one hour.

A team of engineers has created hardware that can learn skills using a type of AI that currently runs on platforms. Sharing intelligence features between hardware and software would offset the energy needed for using AI in more advanced applications such as self-driving cars or discovering drugs.

“Software is taking on most of the challenges in AI. If you could incorporate intelligence into the circuit components in addition to what is happening in software, you could do things that simply cannot be done today,” said Shriram Ramanathan, a professor of materials engineering at Purdue University.

May 29, 2020

Moderna’s clinical trial just entered phase two. Here’s how mRNA vaccines work

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Moderna Therapeutics has just entered phase two of its clinical trials. Here’s how mRNA vaccines work and what the latest developments mean.

May 29, 2020

Solution to century-old math problem could predict transmission of infectious diseases

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, mathematics

A Bristol academic has achieved a milestone in statistical/mathematical physics by solving a 100-year-old physics problem—the discrete diffusion equation in finite space.

May 29, 2020

First Ever Anti-Ageing Gene Discovered in a Secluded Amish Family

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Circa 2017 face_with_colon_three


For the first time, scientists have found a genetic mutation that appears to offer a measure of protection against some of the biological effects of ageing.

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May 29, 2020

COVID-19 immunity lasts only six months, reinfection possible

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Since there is no treatment or vaccine for the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19 — the disease to which it leads — the only way to stop its spread is through social distancing and good hygiene. As such, long-term protective immunity could impact the overall course of the pandemic, the post-pandemic period and any subsequent waves. Until now, this concept has been a key component of the Health Ministry’s second wave strategy.

The Health Ministry recently revealed that it had purchased serological tests with the aim of surveying as many as 1 million people to determine how much of the public has been infected. Since around 80% of people who get the virus show little or no symptoms, they can carry and spread it without knowing.

However, “serology-based tests that measure previous infections for SARS‐CoV‐2 may have limited use if that infection has occurred more than one year prior to sampling,” the Amsterdam researchers explained.

May 29, 2020

Stem cell study suggests paths to restore hearing

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

It turns out that to hear a person yapping, you need a protein called Yap. Working as part of what is known as the Yap/Tead complex, this important protein sends signals to the hearing organ to attain the correct size during embryonic development, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Neil Segil.

May 29, 2020

COVID-19 Mouse CRISPR Engineered to Recapitulate Human COVID-19

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

In addition, the mice developed interstitial pneumonia, which affects the tissue and space around the air sacs of the lungs, causing the infiltration of inflammatory cells, the thickening of the structure that separates air sacs, and blood vessel damage. Compared with young mice, older mice showed more severe lung damage and increased production of signaling molecules called cytokines. Taken together, these features recapitulate those observed in COVID-19 patients.

When the researchers administered SARS-CoV-2 into the stomach, two of the three mice showed high levels of viral RNA in the trachea and lung. The S protein was also present in lung tissue, which showed signs of inflammation. According to the authors, these findings are consistent with the observation that patients with COVID-19 sometimes experience gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea, abdominal pain, and vomiting. But 10 times the dose of SARS-CoV-2 was required to establish infection through the stomach than through the nose.

Future studies using this mouse model may shed light on how SARS-CoV-2 invades the brain and how the virus survives the gastrointestinal environment and invades the respiratory tract. “The hACE2 mice described in our manuscript provide a small animal model for understanding unexpected clinical manifestations of SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans,” concluded co-senior study author Chang-Fa Fan of NIFDC. “This model will also be valuable for testing vaccines and therapeutics to combat SARS-CoV-2.”

May 29, 2020

We can see when your brain forms a memory

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Subtle patterns can be seen in people’s reaction times as their memories are recalled, and boosting these brainwaves could help treat Alzheimer’s disease.